They fly 50 miles per hour. Go years without touching land. Predict the weather. Mate for life. And they're among the world's most endangered birds. Can albatrosses be saved?

Scofield, of New Zealand's Canterbury Museum and co-author of Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters of the World, has been studying albatrosses for more than 20 years. To research these birds is to commit oneself to months at a time on the isolated, storm-lashed but utterly spectacular specks of land on which they breed.

All but 2 of the 21 albatross species recognized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature are described as vulnerable, endangered or, in the case of the Amsterdam and Chatham albatrosses, critically endangered. The scientists hope that the data they gather may save some species from extinction.

Scofield said. He and Moniz were planning to stay three weeks on the Pyramid (a storm-swept rock in New Zealand's Chatham Islands), and they hoped to deploy the popsicle-size GPS logger—tracking devices on a dozen breeding adults to track their movements at sea.

Albatrosses are masters of soaring flight, able to glide over vast tracts of ocean without flapping their wings. So fully have they adapted to their oceanic existence that they spend the first six or more years of their long lives (which last upwards of 50 years) without ever touching land.

Albatrosses can plunge into only the top few feet of the ocean, for squid and fish. The lengthy albatross "chickhood" is an adaptation to a patchy food supply: a slow-maturing chick needs food less often than a fast-maturing one. (Similarly, the prolonged adolescence—around 12 years in wandering albatrosses—is an extended education during which birds prospect the oceans, learning where and when to find food.) The chick's nutritional needs cannot be met by a single parent. Mate selection, therefore, is a critical decision, and is all about choosing a partner that can bring home the squid.

In Buller's albatrosses the search for a partner takes several years. It begins when adolescent birds are in their second year ashore, at about age 8. They spend time with potential mates in groups known as gams, the albatross equivalent of singles bars. In their third year ashore, males stake a claim to a nest site and females shop around, inspecting the various territory-holding males. "Females do the choosing, and their main criterion seems to be the number of days a male can spend ashore—presumably a sign of foraging ability," says Stahl.

Pairs finally form in the fourth year ashore. Albatross fidelity is legendary; in southern Buller's albatrosses, only 4 percent will choose new partners. In the fifth year, a pair may make its first breeding attempt. Breeding is a two-stage affair. "Females have to reach a sufficiently fat state to trigger the breeding feeling and return to the colony," says Paul Sagar of New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. "When they are back, the local food supply determines whether or not an egg is produced."

Because it takes so long for the birds to produce a chick, albatross populations are keenly vulnerable to threats on their breeding islands.

Yet the most pernicious threats to albatrosses today are not to chicks but to adult birds. This is not just because of the efficiency of modern fishing practices but because fishing equipment—hooks, nets and trawl wires—inflict a heavy toll of injury and death. John Croxall, a seabird scientist with the British Antarctic Survey says, knowledge of the birds' distribution at sea and their foraging patterns is "critical to their conservation."

GPS loggers can give a bird's position to within a few yards. Some loggers also have temperature sensors. By attaching them to the legs of their study birds, scientists can tell when the birds are flying and when they are resting or feeding on the sea, because the water is generally cooler than the air.

Individuals of some species circumnavigate the globe, covering 500 miles a day at sustained speeds of 50 miles per hour. And then they somehow find their way home—even when home is an outpost in the ocean like the Pyramid, not much bigger than an aircraft carrier. Because the birds maintain their course day and night, in cloudy weather and clear, scientists believe they use some kind of magnetic reckoning to fix their position relative to the earth's magnetic field.

The birds also seem able to predict the weather. Southern Buller's albatrosses were found to fly northwest if a low-pressure system, which produces westerly winds, was imminent, and northeast if an easterly wind-producing high-pressure system prevailed. The birds typically chose their direction 24 hours prior to the arrival of the system, suggesting they can respond to barometric cues.

There are no reliable figures for the number of birds killed per year through contact with commercial fishing operations, but estimates for the Southern Ocean are in the tens of thousands. However, there is some evidence to suggest that fisheries may benefit albatross populations: a ready supply of discarded fish reduces competition for food between and within albatross species and provides an alternative food source to predatory birds such as skua, which often attack albatross chicks.

In albatrosses—long-lived, slow-maturing species that produce a single chick every one to two years—the long-term negative impact of adult death far outweighs the short-term benefit of chick survival. It may take three, four or even five successful chick rearings to compensate for the death of just one parent, says Stahl. He calculates that "even small increases in adult mortality can wipe out the benefit of tons of discards fed to chicks."

One albatross population that has unashamedly been propped up is the colony of endangered northern royal albatrosses at Taiaroa Head, near the city of Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island. Taiaroa Head is one of the only places in the world where a visitor can get close to great albatrosses. The colony is tiny, with only 140 individuals, and the breeding effort is managed assiduously—"lovingly" would not be too strong a word.

Royal albatross chicks are nest-bound for nine months. Providing meals for these chicks is so demanding that the parents take a year off before breeding again. Lyndon Perriman, the senior ranger, described to me some of the ingenious techniques used to maximize reproductive success. ..

Red-Eyed Tree Frog interactive photo slideshow.

With amphibians facing population crashes around the world, the red-eyed tree frog has become a poster species for rainforest conservation.

Every second, a slice of rainforest the size of a football field is destroyed. More than 31 million football fields of rainforest are sacrificed to unsustainable agriculture, ranching and mining every year.

One redoubt is Corcovado National Park on Osa Peninsula, a crooked finger of land jutting out of the southwestern corner of Costa Rica. The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with the Costa Rican government, established the more-than-100,000-acre park in 1975. Today, the Conservancy is developing park management plans to further protect the lush primary rainforests on the western edge of the peninsula, which provide sanctuary for the red-eyed tree frog.

Natural Light Photos.

"Natural Light" gives you access to the most arresting photos from The Nature Conservancy's huge archives. From Tibet to Tanzania, from hissing alligators to quivering zebras, "Natural Light" opens a brilliant window onto our work and the astonishing nature that we at the Conservancy encounter every day.

Related: China’s First National Park - Pudacuo.

.. The insects aren't very good travelers either. When a truck carrying bees gets caught in a summer traffic jam, for instance, hives quickly overheat, despite the fact that the millions of workers inside them furiously fan their wings in an attempt to prevent it, says Wes Card, a beekeeper whose Merrimack Valley Apiaries in Billerica, Mass., pollinates crops from California to Maine.

"Then every minute counts," he adds, for unless the driver can quickly find a way to pull off the road and hose down the hives with cooling water, desperately hot queens emerge from their inner sanctums and typically wind up venturing into nearby colonies on the truck, where they are perceived as alien invaders and promptly killed.

One of CCD's strangest symptoms, say bee experts, is a phenomenon that might be called the madness of the nurses. Nurse bees are workers that nurture a hive's preadult bees, called brood. Workers begin their adult lives as nurses, and only during the final third or so of their six-week lives do they become foragers, venturing outside the hive to collect nectar and pollen.

Researchers have discovered that the young nurses are maintained in a kind of immature, thickheaded state by chemical signals emanating from the queen. Nurses aren't supposed to leave the hive. They're not ready to cope with the big outside world, which requires a mature bee's smarts. Besides, with nurses on leave, the all-important brood would wither.

Yet empty hives struck by CCD are often found with intact brood, which means nurses were on the job shortly before all the bees flew off forever. Beekeepers find this gross dereliction of duty much weirder than the disappearance of foragers, which essentially work themselves to death and often die outside the hive.

Says Hackenberg: "Basically, I've never seen bees go off and leave brood. That's the real kicker."

Perhaps the nurses aren't really acting crazy when they fly away. Instead, their strange behavior may represent a perfectly natural attempt by doomed workers to protect their sisters from killer microbes.

After all, a hive's workers represent a famously close-knit sorority, geared by evolution to act strictly in the best interests of their colonies. Beekeepers have long known that sick bees generally leave the hive to die, minimizing the risk that they will infect others.

To beekeepers' dismay, the farm bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, which calls for $286 billion to be spent over the next five years on everything from school snacks to biofuels, earmarked no funds specifically for CCD research.

Related:

Are The Bees Dying off Due to Stress?

Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists.

Sep 06, Bee researchers close in on Colony Collapse Disorder. (Physorg.com)

Somewhat related:

How drones find queens: Odorant receptor for queen pheromone identified.

Lions are the only truly social cat, living in groups called prides. A pride is a set of females, often but not always sisters, along with their cubs and subadult cubs. There are also one or more males, usually a coalition of two brothers, but sometimes unrelated lions. Lionesses are the backbone of the pride—they stay together for many years. Males tend to come and go—the typical time frame for them dominating a pride is just 3 to 4 years. Upon reaching adulthood female cubs may stay with the pride. Males never do—they disperse and become nomadic, looking for a pride where they can challenge the dominant male and take over.

Male lions really look the part of the "king of beasts". Their lives are full of violence, exploitation and sex—in other words just like human royalty through much of history. Male lions sleep an average 20 hours per day. The females on the other hand do all of the really hard work—killing the majority of prey, which the males then appropriate for themselves. The main danger males face is fighting off other males that want to take over their pride and territory. This is serious business; most male lions die in such fights. In between territory fights they are bad tempered and terrorize the females in their pride. ..

Lions can seem quite inept at hunting, because they have no way to communicate complicated information. In order to catch a buffalo a lion must jump on the buffalo's back, and do to that they need to get past the horns. They must jump on the back from the side or behind. Once on the back, the lion hangs on for dear life, a bit like a cowboy riding a bull. The goal is to get the buffalo to stumble. If there is more than one lion hunting this is the point when they will start to pile on.

Lions don't wait to kill the animal before starting the process of eating it—as soon as the buffalo stops thrashing, lions start to eat. This is much harder than it sounds however, because the hide is very thick. ..

Related: The Lion Whisperer Photos.

The ACRES Wildlife Rescue Centre (AWRC) (located in Sungei Tengah Agrotech Park) will occupy two hectares (five acres) and will provide a safe haven for more than 400 wild animals rescued from illegal trade, potentially including primates (such as gibbons, macaques, and lorises), marsupials, reptiles, small ungulates, and small carnivores. The AWRC will also help to end the cruel trafficking in rare species by serving as an educational facility for the public. With the assistance of volunteers, ACRES plans to use the center to generate increased awareness of the impact of the illegal wildlife trade—and to help create a more caring and compassionate society.

Illicit wildlife trafficking is rampant in Southeast Asia, with an active trade in many species of wild animals for their meat, for their body parts to be used in traditional medicines, and for supplying the exotic pet trade.

In recent years, there has been an alarming increase in the illegal trade in protected species of wild animals and plants. In Singapore, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) has stepped up its enforcement efforts, leading to the confiscation of an increasing number of illegally traded animals.

The AWRC will provide such confiscated animals with an ideal environment in which to rest and recuperate. Wherever possible, ACRES will seek to repatriate animals back to reputable sanctuaries in their country of origin. However, for those animals who cannot be repatriated, the AWRC will serve as a permanent home.

ACRES undercover operations has led to prosecutions of importers, traders, and buyers of illegal trade in Singapore. ACRES operates the 24-hour ACRES Wildlife Crime Hotline, which provides a means of blowing the whistle on anyone who buys, owns, or trades in exotic species.

Public roadshows, advertisements in the local media, and talks and exhibitions at schools are all part of a strategy to raise public awareness of the impact of the illegal wildlife trade and ultimately to achieve the main aim of ACRES: to foster compassion and respect for all animals.

ACRES - Animal Concerns Research and Education Society.

Help Donate to ACRES.

Types of animals allowed to be sold in pet shops (from AVA)

The Nature Conservancy has helped China achieve a conservation landmark: the establishment of that country's first national park, which will also serve as a model for a new Chinese national park system.

The new park — Pudacuo National Park in China's Northwest Yunnan Province — is located in one of the most biodiverse regions of the world.

The establishment of Pudacuo National Park is significant in other ways as well:

• It increases conservation in the region by incorporating 10 times more land into an area that was formerly a nature reserve;

• It introduces skilled park management techniques to help abate threats to biodiversity in the area;

• It provides a source of environmental education for local communities; and

• It provides economic benefits to local communities through park-related jobs and ecotourism.

The Conservancy introduced the national park system to China as part of a partnership with the Chinese government. The partnership included study tours for local, provincial and national Chinese government officials to such places as Yellowstone National Park in the United States and Komodo National Park in Indonesia, where they observed examples of protected-area management and learned about park design, infrastructure development and tourism management.

“What…distinguishes this park [from a typical Chinese nature reserve] is that the local communities are already benefiting from it because they are preferentially employed for jobs within the park,” says Zhu Li, communications manager for the Conservancy’s China Program. “The national park system embodies the conservation ideal of ‘nature for people’ rather than ‘nature from people.’”

Researchers have found that New Caledonian crows--which are known to make complex food-getting tools in the wild--can also spontaneously use one tool on another to get a snack.

It appears that the birds may have solved the problem that confronted them by using analogical reasoning rather than simple trial and error. Analogical reasoning requires the ability to see a novel situation as being essentially the same as a previous situation, the researchers explained.

In the study, the researchers presented crows with some meat in a hole and a stick that left the meat out of reach. The birds needed to get a long stick out of a "toolbox" in order to get the meat from the hole. However, the long stick was also out of reach. "The creative thing the crows did was to use the short stick to get the long tool out of the box so that they could then use the long stick to get the meat," said Alex Taylor, also of the University of Auckland.

In a second experiment, the researchers reversed the positions of the two sticks so that the small stick was inside the toolbox and the long stick was handy. The crows then briefly probed the box containing the short stick with the long stick before correcting their error by taking the stick directly to the hole.

Gray said. "Six out of seven birds tried to get the long stick with the short stick at their first attempt at solving the problem. To do this, they had to inhibit their normal response of trying to get the food directly with the short stick and realize that they could use the short stick to get the long stick."

Behavioural Ecology Research Group provide many details on the research of New Caledonian crows tool making and using behaviour.

New Caledonian crow tool manufacture and use - University of Auckland.